مرتضی قاسمی حامد

al-Muṣannaf by Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah (d. 235/849) is among the most significant hadith works in Islamic history. With more than 37,000 reports covering a wide range of legal, ethical, theological, and historical subjects, it played a crucial role in preserving the narrative heritage of the early centuries. In addition to Prophetic traditions, the collection contains numerous statements by Companions and Successors, and its structure is organized into legal and thematic chapters. This study uses a descriptive–analytical approach to examine the structure and content of the work. The aim is to clarify Ibn Abī Shaybah ’s methodology in collecting, arranging, and transmitting reports. The study also assesses the status of al-Muṣannaf within Sunni hadith corpora and its reception in Shi’a sources. The findings show that Ibn Abī Shaybah emphasized unelaborated transmission, detailed Isnād citation, thematic arrangement, and the inclusion of diverse materials. He left biographical evaluation, content analysis, and preferential judgment to the reader. This approach makes the work a neutral and foundational source for historical studies and comparative Fiqh, but further analysis is needed for direct juridical use. The high esteem of Sunni hadith scholars for this work and the frequent references to it by Shi’a scholars demonstrate its inter-sectarian relevance and value for comparative scholarship.

Shaykh Ṣadūq is one of the great hadith scholars of the Shia Imamiyyah in the fourth century AH, who left behind nearly three hundred authored works, indicating his effective role in promoting the culture of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS). One of the comprehensive approaches in the early period was writing books with attention to solving a problem or meeting a scientific need. Therefore, Shaykh Ṣadūq , with this goal, authored the book al-Khiṣāl , which is a comprehensive collection of ethical and doctrinal narrations. Although the majority of the book consists of narrations and he did not intend to provide explanations beneath the text of the narrations, he employed specific methods in citing them. Extracting these methods, categorizing, and analyzing them, which is the main issue of this research, is of great importance for emulation in hadith compilations. This book categorizes and organizes narrations in a novel format based on number and numerical order. This article examines it using a descriptive-analytical method. Therefore, while introducing the book and its structure and categorizing narrations based on the main narrators, the author's method in citing narrations is extracted, considering how the author cites the narrations. After examining the content of the book, the results show that al-Khiṣāl is a relatively topic-oriented hadith compendium, compiled in 26 chapters and 1255 hadiths, and includes a collection of doctrinal, ethical, jurisprudential, historical, theological, and other narrations. Their commonality lies in the number of characteristics mentioned in the narrations. The author's method in citing narrations consists of: "Citing narrations with Isnād (chain of narration), utilizing Shia and Sunni narrations in selecting narrations, explaining narrations with the help of other narrations, utilizing the knowledge of Takhrīj in recording narrations, paying attention to Samāʼ (oral transmission) in narrating hadith, numerical categorization of narrations, collecting narrations with diverse topics, and an educational and instructive approach in citing narrations."